Irish Mirror has learned many who have had the operations are either refused medical cards or are having existing ones taken away from them by the HSE

Padraig Gilligan and his wife Elaine with their new baby daughter Katie Andie, and Joan McIntyre with her fiance Andrew Gilligan

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Transplant patients are being forced to skip the drugs keeping them alive because they can’t afford them.

The Irish Mirror has learned many who have had the operations are either refused medical cards or are having existing ones taken away from them by the HSE.

A third of all transplant patients never return to work, leaving them struggling to pay the €144 a month they need for the medication.

After a transplant it is essential they take vital immunosuppressant drugs to stop the body rejecting the organ.

But the drugs cost almost €2,000 a year and on top of that, illness-prone transplant patients who have their medical cards taken off them or who are continually refused one have to pay for doctor’s appointments, scans and dental treatment even though most aren’t fit to work.

And we can reveal that some are being left with no choice but to risk their lives by skipping their drugs or trying to make them last longer because they can’t afford the price tag.

Patients have hit out at the HSE for the “cruel” tightfistedness and say the spiralling medical costs are tarnishing their second chance at a healthy life.

Padraig Gilligan, from Riverstown, Co Sligo, got a kidney from his brother Andrew in 2009 when he was 33.

He said: “When I started dialysis at 30 I was so ill all I could do was work and sleep. I was given the medical card and told I would have it for life because of my illness.

“Then in October I got a letter saying I had lost it and now I’m paying €144 a month for my tablets.

“I have a big mortgage, three kids and another on the way and I’m self-employed so it is a major stress I don’t need.

“I can pay the money because I have to, because dialysis is so horrible that I can’t go back to that, but I know people who have been forced to skip their medication for a month or start staggering it to make it last longer and at the end of the day that could cost them their organ and their life.

“I’m baffled because what the HSE don’t seem to see is the alternative to paying for our immunosuppressant drugs is so much more expensive, it’s no quality of life for us, and it’s taking up hospital beds.”

There are 1,800 patients on kidney dialysis in Ireland, costing the State as much as €70,000 each.

They need three sessions a week at €400 each so the HSE is paying almost €5,000 a month – compared to just €144 to cover the cost of the pills patients need to live a normal life once they have had a transplant.

Michael McHugh, 45, from Ballygawley in Co Sligo, had a kidney operation in 2006 when he was 37. He fumed: “Transplants aren’t cures they are treatments and while they are a gift of life their success depends on medication afterwards.

“So why would the HSE invest all that money and resources into caring for a sick person and giving them a transplant only to make it almost impossible for them to pay for the drugs they need to make that organ work.

“I’m OK, I still work away but when I first applied back in 2006 I had kidney failure and needed a transplant yet I was refused a medical card and I just don’t see the logic.”